


World's Best Grandpa

by Ellerigby13



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Holiday Fic Exchange, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 19:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17269409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellerigby13/pseuds/Ellerigby13
Summary: After a year from hell, one vibrant ex-lab supervisor is somehow capable of making Steve’s Christmas season merry and bright.Or, five times Steve falls for Darcy, and one time Darcy falls for Steve.





	World's Best Grandpa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolviesgal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolviesgal/gifts).



> My (very late) contribution for the Shieldshock Holiday Gift Exchange! Also my first ever 5+1 fic, so I hope you enjoy <3

She rides into his life like a trainwreck, loud and colorful, pounding her fist on the door of the compound in snow up to her shins.  Through the comms, he can hear her shrill, commanding tone, and he can’t help the smile that stretches across his lips.

The first time he’s smiled in months.

“Yo, I  _ know _ some of you are in there, okay?  Thor, if you can hear me, you’d best get your muscular Nordic ass out here, it’s Darcy!”

If she’s surprised to see Steve Rogers, Captain America himself, swing open the door in front of her, she certainly doesn’t show it.

“You’re Darcy Lewis?  The one who worked with Jane Foster and Erik Selvig in New Mexico and London?”

She gives him a once-over, crystal blue eyes peering through her small rectangular frames, and frowns.  He’s heard of her plenty - from briefings with SHIELD, and from Thor, who brags about his brilliant Jane and his thunder sister Darcy, the wonderful young lady who’d been able to, in his words, not Steve’s, “bring the god of thunder to his knees without so much as flinching.”

“Yeah,” she says shortly, bringing her gaze back up to meet his.  “You guys suck ass at communicating with the rest of the real world.  What the  _ hell  _ has been going on?”

It has been three months since The Snap, since Thanos prevailed in conquering the Avengers, the Infinity Stones, and the fabric of reality itself.  Steve, Bruce, Rhodey, and Natasha have returned to the near-forgotten compound in upstate New York to lick their wounds and try to get a headstart on putting society back together after the loss of half the Earth’s population.  Not that the world is in any shape to report any of this - Steve has halfheartedly turned on the television and the radio every day to see if anything has changed, only to be met with static.

It’s like the end of the world, and for the past three months, he has been in a state he never thought he’d see: powerlessness.

“How do you know it had to do with us?”

She rolls her eyes and brushes past him into the compound, rolling her backpack off her shoulders and carrying it on her elbow as she takes in the place.  “TV showed spaceships before everything went to hell. How could it  _ not _ have something to do with you?”

Steve feels the ghost of a laugh blow through his nose, and he folds his arms over his chest while he watches her waltz down the corridor, like she was invited here personally and hasn’t just walked into what used to be one of the most well-guarded secrets in the country.  “Fair enough.”

Something ignites in him when she lets herself into the kitchen and sets her backpack, which he now sees is full to the brim, down on the bench at the breakfast nook.

“You need a place to stay?” he hears himself ask her, and when she turns to face him, her eyes both hard and soft at once, his gut fills with warmth, and the unpredictable urge to smile strikes him again.

Darcy has moved in the entire contents of her small apartment by the end of the day.

* * *

Steve catches her hanging tinsel in the foyer first.  She stands on a wooden stool, tongue between her teeth, as she pins each strand to the wall, putting painstaking care into the balance of the loops of silver and gold across the bland white of the wall.  He’s just coming in from his daily morning run, and it’s still early - so early he hadn’t anticipated anyone would be up yet. But here she is, the first day of December, dressed for the day with her hair in a tight bun at the top of her head, plucking thumbtacks from a little plastic container on the nearest table and setting up Christmas decorations, like they’re a family and this is their home.

“Does that look even to you?” she asks, and Steve hadn’t thought that she’d known he was there.

“The second loop from the left is drooping just a little.”  He pushes his hands into his hips, knowing that the reason he can’t catch his breath has less to do with his run and more to do with the sliver of skin that peeks out from the bottom of her sweater, just above her leggings.

_ Her leggings _ .

He feels his ears burning, as his eyes trace the curve that runs from her slim waist to her hips to the decidedly  _ gorgeous _ swell of her ass that those leggings hug so perfectly.  For a fleeting moment he wonders what it would be like to dig his hands into it, to have her pressed to his front and to hold her there while he runs his fingers down the sleek material of her leggings to get a good hold on it.

“Better?” she says, jarring him from his little moment, and a rush of shame floods his chest.

“Yeah.  Yeah, looks good.”

“Natasha promised she’d help me with the rest of the wall decorations, but would you and Bruce mind picking up a tree?  I’ve got a shitton of ornaments in one of the boxes we picked up from my apartment, and I’d hate for them to go to waste.”

“Okay,” he tells her, and when she finally turns around to face him, the fact that her eyes are all lit up from the spirit of the season makes him wonder how anyone could ever say no.

* * *

 

Bruce doesn’t let up that he and Steve went out and cut the Christmas tree down themselves, so Steve doesn’t either.  They return to the compound the following day with a tree that hopefully isn’t infested with every insect under the sun, but the look on Darcy’s face would be worth it even if it was.

“Oh, my God.  This is perfect.  Thank you!”

She hugs each of them tighter than a person of her stature should be able to, but the feel of her body cradling his and the soft, rosy smell of her hair throw Steve’s caution to the wind.  He hugs her back, unable to keep the smile off his face.

In what feel like moments, she’s gathered up the troops, so to speak, so that Natasha’s setting up a tree skirt with penguins, Rhodey’s untangling a thickly packed ball of Christmas lights, Bruce is lacing hooks onto ornaments, and Steve is pushing the stump of the tree into the stand and screwing it in securely.

Darcy, meanwhile, has graduated to determining which topper is appropriate for adorning the point of the tree, the ages long debate of the angel versus star.

It takes her so long, in fact, that the skirt is unfolded and neatly tucked around the tree, the ball of lights untangled and strewn around the branches, and the ornaments thrown on haphazard among the leaves, by the time she’s made her decision.

She hands the glitter-covered star to Steve, the tallest of all of them, to place at the top.

“You should do it.”  Her voice is small, meek almost, and the sound of it mixed with the way she’s looking up at him makes him want to kiss her on the spot.  “You should be the one to put the star on top.”

He reaches over the assortment of Disney- and genital-themed ornaments to rest a golden star, one that somehow reminds him of being a kid again, one that somehow reminds him of being a kid at Christmas again, on the point of the tree.

* * *

Darcy insists on setting up Christmas Eve dinner for the five of them, but when Erik Selvig comes knocking on the door just as the mashed potatoes come out of the oven, she flings her arms around him, tucking herself tight into his chest.  When she finally pulls away, she looks up at him with tears in her eyes.

“You’re okay.”

“ _ You’re _ okay.  Jane,” he says breathlessly, and as Steve sees the disheveled state of him, hair tossed and wearing clothes that barely even fit, let alone match, he curses the shoddy care that SHIELD had taken to compensate for the hold Loki - the mind stone - had had on him all those years ago.  “Is she...is she safe?”

Darcy’s teeth close down on the plush of her bottom lip.  She doesn’t have to say a word. It strikes Steve that she’s never spoken about Jane to him before - nor about Erik.  They’ve gone over all the pop culture references Steve ought to have learned by now, and the proper way to throw a punch, and their all-time fantasy baseball teams, but they’ve never talked about either of their friends or family.  Steve supposes it’s because, in this world and in this time, it’s too hard to think about the people they’ve loved and lost.

“I see.”  Erik sighs, and gently squeezes her arm.  When he glances over her shoulder and spots Steve standing behind her, looking concerned, and Natasha behind him, and Bruce behind her, he turns sheepish.  “I’m sorry - I felt this was the best place to come - I hadn’t realized it was Christmas.”

Before any of them have the chance to so much as open their mouths in response, Darcy has pulled him in and closed the door behind him.

And as she and Erik catch up, both speaking increasingly animatedly, on the way to the dining room, no one questions Natasha’s sudden disappearance, nor the sudden appearance of an extra place setting at the end of the table.

* * *

 

Early Christmas morning Nat finds a distress signal on their comms that she insists has something to do with Clint, whom they haven’t heard from since his house arrest sentencing.  She and Bruce leave on the Quinjet before the sun comes up.

Rhodey has planned to meet with some old military buddies in D.C., so he’s out before noon.

And exhausted from the journey he’s made to meet the last of Earth’s greatest defenders, Erik sleeps well into the afternoon, leaving only Darcy and Steve to pick at the small pile of presents beneath the tree.

“This one’s from Bruce,” she says, pushing a small but slightly heavy box his way, wrapped pristinely in blue paper and with a silvery bow on top.

“A smartwatch,” Steve replies aloud, once the wrappings have been shed and he’s pulled the article out of the little black cylinder.  “Nice.”

“Yeah, they check your mileage, which, knowing you, should average out about fifty miles a day.”  She glances wistfully down at her own FitBit, and Steve offers a slightly abashed smile of encouragement, realizing that there may be days she doesn’t exactly hit that coveted ten thousand steps.

“I’ll shave off part of the run for a walk with you, if you wanted to get a few more steps in with me.”  He offers his hand for her to shake, already having strapped the watch onto his wrist.

Darcy takes it, beaming.  “Sure. That can be my New Year’s resolution, to get my walks in with you.”  A rush of warmth bubbles up Steve’s chest, and he can’t help matching her smile.  “If you don’t mind me, you know, joining up with you for the first three weeks of the year and then, I dunno, never walking ever again.”

He chuckles.  Outside the snow is falling fast, and he has a feeling Nat, Bruce, and Rhodey will have a hard time getting home today.

“You think it’d be okay if I put a fire on?” he asks her, already clambering to his feet.  Darcy follows suit, nearly knocking into him on her way up, and Steve steadies her with gentle hands.

“Yeah.  But you gotta meet me in the kitchen when you’re done, so I can make you a cup of my famous hot cocoa.  Deal?”

“You ask me like I have a choice.”

“You always have a choice with me, old man.”

He wonders if today is the day.  If he’ll work up the courage to tell her how he feels, to explain that it’s her heart, her hopeful eyes, her sarcasm, her boldness, her curiosity - that have him falling for her faster than the flakes of white outside.  He wonders without hope if she feels the same.

After all, magical things have been known to happen on Christmas.

Once the flames have begun to lick the inside of the chimney, he makes his way to the kitchen to find her sitting on the counter with a small red and green box in her lap.

“The milk’s in the microwave, but you’ve gotta open this before I pour you up.”

Her fingers brush against his when he takes the box from her, and Steve plucks the glittery golden bow off as carefully as he can.  He wants to tell her she shouldn’t have gotten him anything, and he would have, if he hadn’t known how important Christmas is to her.  Or how much better it makes her feel to provide for everyone else.

Once he’s got the wrapping off, the box is small and white and nondescript.  He pops it open to reveal the white rim of a mug, and when he pulls it out, the rest of the mug is mostly as small and white and nondescript as its box, except for the big black letters clustered together on one side.

_ WORLD’S BEST GRANDPA. _

“They didn’t have ‘World’s Best Hundred-Year-Old Superhero’ on Amazon so I figured this would have to do.”

She’s swinging her legs back and forth and looking at him so hopefully, he thinks he might just burst with affection.

“I love it,” he says before he can help himself, and stutter-steps forward to wrap his arms around her, just low enough that she can sling her arms over his shoulders.  He holds her there perhaps a little longer than he should, but  _ God _ , she smells so nice and she fits so perfectly against his chest, he think he might die if he lets go.  “Merry Christmas, Darcy.”   


“Merry Christmas, Steve.”

He pulls away enough to look her in the eyes - this is it, shit, finally -

_ BEEP BEEP BEEP. _

“The milk - ” they say in unison, and Steve turns away from her, mug in hand, kicking himself for the umpteenth time that week.

He deserves the burn his index finger sustains from grabbing the Pyrex measuring cup too quickly, and deserves the burning in his stomach for not kissing her when he got the chance.

* * *

There’s a discount on the nearest ice rink for New Year’s Eve, and Darcy’d be damned if she didn’t take advantage of a good discount.  Natasha and Bruce are still away, and have checked in with Steve about finding Clint in Tokyo, which they’ve done, and about coming home, which they’re working on.  When Darcy asks Rhodey if he wants to come, he raises his eyebrows at her and tells her that, even with his original legs, he’s shit on any kind of board, blade, or skate.  When Darcy asks Erik if  _ he _ wants to come, he raises his eyebrows at her and tells her that she and the Captain ought to have some time alone together, so they can speak on this...unspoken thing that’s been going on.

A thin blush spreads from Darcy’s ears to the tip of her nose.  Of course there’s no unspoken thing with her and Steve - had Erik seen the guy?  How could a guy like Captain America himself have feelings for a girl like her?

Nonetheless, the ice rink party ends up being the two of them, but Darcy’s not complaining much.  Steve sits close enough to her on the car ride down that she can smell the soft but musky aftershave radiating off him, hints of the cocoa on his breath that they’d drank together that morning.

She finds herself smiling into her reflection in the window and pulling her sweater just a bit tighter around herself.

“You ever been ice skating before?” she asks him, once they’ve sat on the bench outside the rink and started lacing up their boots.  Steve smiles and nudges her knee with his.

“Hey, I’m old, not dead.  Ma used to take me on a pond upstate, when she wasn’t terrified I’d fall through and die of frostbite.  Or have an asthma attack and die. Or fall and break a bone and get an infection and - ”

“Die,” Darcy finished for him, grinning.  “I get the idea. Well, now that you’re less inclined to do any of those things, you wanna help me up?”

He grabs her by the hand, and even with the temperature drop from all the ice, he’s unbelievably warm.  In fact, he doesn’t let go until they’ve passed the little gate and he’s pushing off to skate a beat ahead of her with the grace of a dancer and the ass of an angel.

Darcy pushes off to follow him up, sliding past with ease.  As she passes by him, she tries to wiggle her hips in teasing, but feels herself lurching forward.   _ Shit. _  As the ice looms closer, she spreads her arms out to steady herself and ends up overcompensating, feeling herself rock backwards.

But just as Darcy braces herself to feel the very familiar bite of hard ice on her ass, her back collides with something decidedly softer and warmer than ice, and that smells a bit more like Steve and cocoa.

“Hey,” he chuckles, turning her around in his arms, one hand on the small of her back and the other at her hip, keeping her upright.  “I guess I should’ve asked  _ you _ if you’d ever been skating before.”

“Don’t tease.”  From the corner of her eye she can spot one of her own hands on his chest, the other curling to the back of his neck.  “I’m just uncoordinated, that’s all.”

“I can tell.”  Why is he so close?  Why are there little flecks of gold in his eyes?  And why does he look like he’s going to lean down and kiss her any moment now?

In case anyone was wondering, Steve’s lips were exactly as warm as the rest of them, and exactly as soft as she had expected.  He had pulled her flush to his chest, and a peculiar warmth had filled her from head to toe. And  _ God, _ he was kissing her so gently, his teeth just brushing her lower lip, his tongue just darting out to trace the crease between her lips, his large hand just ghosting against her skin above her tailbone.

When he finally pulls away, his cheeks and nose pink from the cold and a - dare she think it? - content smile across his lips, Darcy has to resist the urge to pull him down for another kiss.

“I shoulda done that a long time ago, doll.”  And because he’s Steve Rogers, he presses another kiss to her forehead and smiles warmly down at her again.  “Didn’t think this year would go as well as it did, till you dropped in.”

“Seems kinda fitting to start the next year with each other, then.”  She smooths out the front of his jacket as she chews on her lip, the taste of him lingering.  “If you want to, I mean. You know, ring in 2019 with some champagne, maybe some Netflix.”

“Yeah, I can drink it outta that mug you got me.”


End file.
